


Etched in Skin

by Severa



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU: If Thanos made them forget who got dusted, Avengers: Endgame AU, Background Relationships, Gen, Oneshot, Other minor characters - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers if you don’t watch trailers, Tony gets a tattoo, gen - Freeform, spiderfam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 19:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17731631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/Severa
Summary: Tony clings to the names left behind.





	Etched in Skin

Peter faded to dust in his hands. He fell like sand through an hourglass, slipping through his fingers like water. Tony felt himself fall, too; shifting backwards to sit on his heels, then the ground, rubbing his palms together to get the dirt off his hands. Horrified as he realized he was wiping away the only thing he had left of him. His ashes, the memory of him...

Then he pushed his hands together again to get the soot off, perplexed as to why he’d stopped in the first place.

“Don’t,” he heard Nebula say. She stepped fast across the orange sand of Titan to get to him, grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him up to his feet. “Don’t.”

 _Don’t what?_ He stared at where he’d been, at the pile of ash beside them, and wondered why it hurt so much to look at it. Why his stomach knotted up. “I-“ He’d been holding someone... He could still feel the weight in his arms, the flakes of dirt between his fingers. But where’d he gone? Who had it been? No one else was here.

Nebula shook him hard. Her nails dug deep, prying like vice grips between his muscles, but it was the twitching that pulled his attention back. The seams where blue skin met metal plates sparked gently in the red light.

“You’ll forget. Don’t forget.” She wheezed like she was in pain, the harsh electronic undertone of her voice distorted. “Quill.” Her gripped tightened enough that he knew he was going to bruise, but it didn’t matter. Nothing hurt more than the nanobots plugging up his rib cage, the tightness in his chest. The... grief? “Peter Quill. Drax… The bug girl.” Black, lens-like each searched his expression for an answer. “Antenna.”

“Um… Man- Mantis.” He said her name but couldn’t remember her face, only the soothing, strange accent of her voice. I’m-here-to-kick-names-and-take-ass Bug Girl. But that memory of her was fading fast. “Oh _god_.”

That was what Thanos had done. Snapped his fingers and made them disappear; like they never had been. Wiped them out. Erased them.

“...the magician...” Nebula tried.

But Tony couldn’t remember. He shook his head, feeling an uneasy horror settle in underneath his wounds, crawling underneath his skin. It was gone. Sand through the hourglass, water between his fingers. Someone in his arms.

“The boy.” Her neck twitched and her eyes sparked somewhere deep underneath the lens, a flash of arclight in the endless black. “Your boy.”

 _I don’t have a boy._ He wanted one. Wanted to name him Morgan. Or her. Whichever as long as it was healthy; Pepper’s baby, their legacy, more than metal and blood and shiny suits.

But who was his boy?

“Spider… spider something.”

“Spider-man,” he said automatically.

Spider-man. The Parker kid. _Peter._

_Holy shit._

* * *

When Valkyrie brought him home, starved and angry, wearing a suit built in a forge he couldn’t possibly pronounce the name of, Tony looked at Steve Rogers and wondered why he wanted to hurl.

The body remembered. He didn’t.

“So you didn’t need me after all,” he said instead of _why, why do I want to hate you,_ and Steve laughed softly.

“We always need you, Tony. Nice suit.”

In a world where Bucky Barnes had never existed, Tony still didn’t know. There was nothing to know. His parents had died in a car crash; his father had been drinking, probably, and Tony hated him for it. Steve was never the wiser, because recorded memory said that Bucky Barnes has never been born. There was no long fall off a runaway train. No Winter Soldier.

“...We’re forgetting something,” Natasha murmured, helping Tony into a chair as golden nanobots chased down his arms, back into his hollow heart.

He stared down at the name he kept carving into his forearm, letters raised in angry, red lines that kept scabbing over. It refused to scar. No matter how deep Tony went, it refused to scar.

_PETER._

“We are.”

* * *

“We beat Thanos,” Rhodes said flatly, crossing his arms as he leaned back into the cushions of the couch. Tony stared at him from his own chair, bent forward with his hands clasped between his knees. Pepper stood beside him, her hand in his hair.

Natasha perched on the arm of his chair, the buzz of a tattoo gun in hand as she dug ink into his skin.

_PETER_

“We think we did,” Nebula corrected shortly. She sat on the ground at the center coffee table as Bruce carefully, oh so carefully, prodded a silver tool around in her exposed skull. The blue portions of her scalp peeled back like the layers of a banana.

“Are you sure you can’t feel this?”

She handed up a few colorful wires from a box they’d taken with them off the _Bataran_. Foreign prongs for foreign plugs. “Stop asking.”

Steve ran his hands through his hair and Thor paced behind the kitchen counter as Bruce hooked her brain up to a tablet, not looking any more comfortable than before. The Valkyrie sat at the bar, pouring herself another drink in silence.

“If we didn’t beat Thanos,” he said carefully, “Then what happened?”

“I split his skull, Steve.”

Tony leaned his forehead into Pepper’s hip. She raked her fingers through his hair, concerned less about the spur-of-the-moment tattoo and more about the look in his eyes.

“Who’s Peter, Tony?”

He swallowed hard, reaching over to hold her hand.

“I can’t remember.”

* * *

FRIDAY didn’t remember either. Neither did DUM-E. There was no record anywhere about anyone related to him called Peter, but the name was still etched in his forearm in neat, thin letters. He couldn’t- _wouldn’t_ forget what Thanos wanted him to misremember. Wouldn’t comply to the history someone else had shaped.

So FRIDAY recorded everything he could remember. The hazy, murky details of the battle on Titan. How he recalled the Ultron debacle, which felt wrong in so many ways - like he was missing an integral part of the story, or a person or fight that had been edited away -  and everything after that. She dug up files on his computer that appear spontaneously corrupted; scraps of plans for a suit he would never, ever wear. Pictures of spiders that didn’t make any sense.

He started a folder called _Peter_ and began to file all the nonsense away. It was available on the general network, so it wasn’t long before Nat and Clint started info-dumping, too. Even Steve (and Steve on Thor’s behalf).

Pepper traded favors with Wakanda so Vision’s body could be flown into New York. She found a little town somewhere in Missouri that had unexplained, isolated damage from an incident no one could remember and funded the repairs. They were allotted a small amount of land in return for an Asgardian refugee center, a thank you to Thor and the people who’d carried Tony and Nebula home from the deep reaches of space. Nidavellir was nice and all, but it was hard to remember why they’d stayed longer than to refuel; why Tony had hand-crafted a suit called Thanosbuster instead of going home. He just didn’t know why he’d needed it. Why a giant dwarf had let him make it in the first place.

But he wasn’t the only one with memories that didn’t make sense. The Mandela Effect was rearing its head across the world - patchwork memories accepted by the collective population with relative, unquestioned ease. Why resources were so abundant and excess infrastructure lay to waste wasn’t a topic for conversation. It just _was_. For five years the world didn’t ask questions and spent its time rebuilding, talking about an ‘Incident’ that no one knew the details to, but seemed by and large a miracle instead of a tragedy.

No one asked why and the ones who did promptly forgot their reasoning.

Only Nebula, whose actual, literal brain was half-computer, remembered to ask. Remembered that she’d forgotten something. Maybe she didn’t know what it was, but she knew her sister was dead because of it. That it was Thanos’ fault. So she wouldn’t let anyone else forget. She kept them sharp. Kept them wondering. Even when it would be so easy to fall into the comfortable routine of their new world, she kept Tony honest. Kept him asking about the name he’d gotten etched in his skin.

_Peter._

* * *

Then Thor came to the table one day and said, “This has happened before.”

He was drenched. Soaking wet, dripping water like he’d just pulled himself out of the shower fully clothed. The Valkyrie stood with him, her permanent give-no-shit attitude replaced with rage, playing out in dangerously flat lines across her expression.

Clint looked over his coffee at him. Tony stopped picking at his beard, glancing up from the tablet Rocket was tapping on.

“Thor?”

“Everyone forgot,” he said, dropping Stormbreaker down on the bar. He grabbed a bottle and drank straight from the mouth, guzzling a twelve thousand dollar bottle of whiskey without so much as twitch.

“Damn,” Clint whistled, shaking his head. “You fall in a lake?”

”A pool.” He grunted, wiping his mouth on his arm. “Pools, actually.”

Tony couldn’t help but feel like his arm was in fire. Clint made a face.

“Who forgot, Thor?”

“We did.” He set the bottle down with a loud _clink_. Val picked it up. “About my sister.”

* * *

Once upon a time, a really shitty Dad had a really shitty daughter and they tried to take over the universe. It went pretty well until the daughter crossed the line - genocide, ambition, bloodthirst; a normal teenage rebellion on Asgard - so Dad put her in time-out for a few thousand years. Then she tried to tell him to fuck off, so he made all of existence forget she ever existed, locked her away, and had two more kids, who, arguably, weren’t any better off than her.

But how did Odin make everyone forget the most terrifying woman who’d ever existed? Being All-Father wasn’t enough, Thor said, and it wasn’t like his big sister had been a secret. She was a household name. The King’s Executioner. But everyone had forgotten about her anyway.

it was because Odin All-Father had pulled an infinity stone out of his ass and did exactly what Thanos would do. Make them forget. He snapped his fingers and rewrote reality because he could, and she was gone forever.

Luckily, Hela liked to spit in the face of his reality.

* * *

In the time between Thor, Rocket, and Nebula going out to track Thanos down and Steve playing nice for the cameras watching, Tony invested in fixing Vision, because he hoped - he _hoped -_ that waking him up would make things better. As every day passed, Nebula’s organic-electronic memory failed. She knew there were people missing from her life more than they did (Lord of Stars, Big Idiot, the Tree and the Bug) but their names were gone. Their faces. Their lives. Everything was fading faster than they realized and if they didn’t find Thanos soon, Tony was afraid it would be gone forever.

And if nothing else, at least he’d have his friend back.

* * *

Thor and Rocket found Carol out in the middle of nowhere.

Carol had a pager and remembered someone named Nick.

* * *

Tony held his breath and carefully, painstakingly, needled a final thread of vibranium into its port. Steady hands clicked his skull back together.

Vision’s eyes flew open.

“ _Wanda_.”

He wrenched upright on top the workshop table, grey and white, and Tony tumbled out of his seat, tools spilling the floor with a loud racket. Clint nocked and arrow and Natasha looked up from the computer across the room, fingers still over the keyboard.

“Who the hell is Wanda?”

* * *

“He’s...a shield agent?” Steve asked. He stood out on the front lawn of the compound, the crunch of burnt grass under his boots. He wished it were easier to remember things - he felt like they'd just pulled him out of the ice. “That doesn’t sound right.”

Carol - Captain Marvel - stood in the middle of Thor’s Bifrost. His cape billowed in the breeze.

“Never heard of him.”

She looked more angry than distressed. It reminded Steve of Peggy when she’d been fighting with… with someone.

“What about Phil?” she tried.

“Coulson?”

The relief on her expression was dashed with Thor’s solemn response.

“Dead.”

* * *

“You don’t remember…” Vision said, standing still in the middle of the kitchen. Everyone was gathered again, back from fixing the world that felt inexplicably broken. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Thanos,” Thor said, “We believe he changed our reality. Why you are not affected…”

He gave a mighty shrug.

Nebula rolled her eyes, fingers tapping across her folded arms. She leaned against a glass pane of wall far from the group. Bruce lingered between her and the main congregation.

“He wasn’t alive.”

“Not awake, maybe.” Tony corrected, but he didn’t even believe himself. “I mean, he’s- you’re-” he amended, looking over to Vision. “Can you even _be_ dead, Viz?”

“Anything’s possible.”

He crossed his arms over his grey chest, tilting his chin down in thought. He’d asked so many questions and received so few answers. Only Carol seemed to remember anything, and that was foggy at best. Clint couldn’t even remember his own children.

“But you remember something,” he said slowly, gesturing shortly to Tony’s arm. The name written there. “Mr. Parker.”

Tony swallowed hard. Steve rubbed his neck and Thor shook his head, looking away.

“I remember that I forgot,” he managed, scratching the tattoo. “Keep reminding myself that I did, anyway.”

“But you remember _what_ we forgot, Vision,” Natasha said, moving the conversation away from the uneasy feelings burgeoning up inside his chest. She leaned against the kitchen counter with Valkyrie, handing her an amber bottle. “Most of it, anyway.”

“Better than nothing,” she grumbled, shearing off the cap with a dagger.

“All I know for certain is that he’s not dead,” he promised, “If Wanda is not here...Thanos isn’t dead.”

“Wanda’s important to you?” Carol asked.

“Yes.” Of nothing else was he more confident.

“And if he’s not dead...” Thor murmured, hand tightening around his axe. “If he’s not dead, Asgard rests unavenged.”

Valkyrie took a very long drink. Steve stood from the couch.

“Then it sounds like it's time to suit up.”

* * *

Standing on Vormir, in the sands of a forgotten planet, where the final stand had been made and the stones shattered across the stars, Tony fell to his knees. His suit crumbled around him and the light of his chest started to dim, to flicker, and he coughed up blood.

 _Boss,_ said FRIDAY. _Don’t go to sleep, Boss._

“Uh-huh…”

It was over. They were in shambles, but it was over.

Nebula’s body lay half-buried in the dirt, where Gamora, revived, bent over her and sobbed, ignoring the broken gauntlet on her arm and the lifelessness in her eyes. The blood on her hands didn’t belong to herself - it was her sister’s and father’s, the massive corpse of Thanos skewered, with a ruby-encrusted dagger sticking out of his spine. She’d killed her father to save the galaxy; her sister had given her life to try and restore it.

Farther away Natasha applied pressure to a gushing wound in Steve’s chest, covered up to the elbows in his blood. He couldn’t hear what he was saying to her, but he’d hazard a guess it was self-righteous martyrdom. The shield stayed in his hand only because it was strapped there.

When it was Tony’s turn to fall, he felt it in slow motion: his eyes sliding shut, the last working bits of nanotech scrambling to shield his face from impact, and FRIDAY gave him a solid electric shock to the spine. He caught himself with one arm.

“ _Stay awake. Carol’s coming.”_

Their new marvel wasn't anywhere close. What Tony could see was Thor and Clint, collapsed but alive near Thanos’ abandoned throne, where the pile of his revived children lay dead. The Valkyrie sat on their corpses and bandaged a massive cut on her arm with torn fabric Squidward’s robes. The Vision tried to help Clint to his feet.

There was something stranger than that happening, though; a split that tore open a seam of green light in mid-air. Magic bullshit, he knew, but it was way too close to Thor for comfort.

 _Move_ , he wanted to scream, but the words wouldn’t come out around the blood. A dark figure stepped out of the tear, parting the air like a curtain and he lifted his other hand, aiming desperately… But there was nothing there but bare skin and Peter’s name. No gauntlet to save his friends.

Tony’s stomach plummeted just in time to hear Thor say, “You _arse_ ,” and laugh like his heart had broken.

“Idiot,” Loki responded in turn, gaunt and pale and impossibly alive. Thor looked like he was about to fall to pieces as his brother literally fell, knees digging into the sand. “How did you- you- you _moron_.”

Then there was something beside him. A mess of limbs tumbling out of nowhere, striking the sand and spraying it up like stray artillery. Red and blue, pale and brown - coughing. A sharp flash of familiar red light in the distance, then orange.

People coming home.

“Ah crap- oh god oh god, no, _oh_ _god ow_.”

The world went sideways. Or maybe he did, because there was sand in his face and someone laying in the dirt beside him. A lanky pile of arms, some gold, picking him up. Different hands on his back, hauling the world back right-ways.

”Peter?”

He knew it was before he said it. He _remembered._

There was more movement around him. Three people running at neck-break speeds towards Gamora; a tree stumbling over itself to get to Rocket, who pushed away rubble to try and get out from underneath a fallen column.

“Mr. Stark!”

 _Kid_. He remembered. How could he have ever forgetten?

All his breath left him in a sharp _oof_ when Peter Parker tangled himself up in his arms, a solid thud of teenage boy ramming into his chest. The pain pushed all the way up his spine, but he didn’t care, wrapping himself around him like it was the end of the world.

“I was so scared. Tony, I- I-”

He bit down on the pain, bearing down on the burden that he knew he’d never be free of. This was on him. All of it was on him.

“So was I, kid.” Tony held on tighter, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. It was the truth. And even now he was afraid that if he let go, he’d never get to hold him again. That he’d forget. “So was I.”


End file.
